What is ‘indigenising the academy’ and why attempt it?

Abstract

We will share some thoughts on what ‘indigenising the academy’ might mean, and why we might attempt it. We come at these questions from our different yet intertwined identities, experiences and lines of intellectual inquiry. Te Kawehau is of Ngāti Hau and Ngāpuhi tribal groups. Her indigenous ancestors arrived in Aotearoa about 1000 years ago. Alison is a Pākehāl her English settler ancestors came as colonists in the 1850s.

Keywords:

• Inclusion
• indigenisation
• indigenization
• academy

Te Kawehau

I’m going to start with a basic rationale for indigenising the academy here in Aotearoa New Zealand.

The indigenising project begins with the fact of indigenous presence. Māori—whānau, hapū and iwi—have been present here in Aotearoa New Zealand for about 1000 years before the arrival of others. And it begins with the fact of indigenous knowledge: distinct Māori ontologies, epistemologies, language, and social and political practices that developed in and with this place. In other words, the project starts with the fact of Māori hapū as ‘tangata whenua’—people of the land, ordinary people, indigenous peoples.

It also starts with the fact of colonisation. And the facts of invitations and refusals.

Invitations

Prior to and following Te Tiriti o Waitangi in 1840, invitations were made by Māori leaders to British leaders in the interests of mutually beneficial economic, technological and epistemological exchanges (see Anderson et al. 2014; Jones & Jenkins, 2011; Salmond, 1997).

The invitation by Māori to such mutual relationships can be seen in the story of Tāmaki Mākaurau, the whenua on which we stand at this very moment, here at the university in central Auckland. In uncertain and challenging times, in a bold attempt to work for peace, stability and prosperity in their territory, Ngāti Whātua in 1840 made a series of invitations to the British Crown. Apihai Te Kawau and his people invited Governor Hobson to Auckland from Kororāreka to set up his power base, they signed Te Tiriti, they flew the Union Jack at Te Rerenga Ora Iti (very near here, at the end of what is now Princes Street), they gifted lands to Pākehā to establish a town, and they welcomed settlers among their people.

Other far-reaching and significant invitations can be identified, too, in a request by Ngāpuhi leader Ruatara to Sydney-based Samuel Marsden (the wealthy businessman and chaplain), nearly 30 years before Te Tiriti. Ruatara asked Marsden to ‘send a schoolteacher’, to bring schooling and new knowledges to the Bay of Islands—thereby initiating the first Pākehā settlement in Aotearoa New Zealand in 1814. Ngāpuhi sent the sons of rangatira to Sydney to learn about Pākehā society and to gain useful new technological skills. Pākehā sought Māori knowledge, such flax working. But also, the invitation from tangata whenua to the teachers, settlers and governors was to learn from Māori—to engage in epistemological exchanges, to build institutions of production and of learning, together.

Our history together is full of examples of Māori teaching and attempting to teach Pākehā about tangata whenua ways of being and doing. It is possible to see the new Māori transliterated words of the time (particularly ‘kāwanatanga’ and ‘kīngitanga’) as examples of Māori invitations to learning, as attempts to teach the new arrivals about how the Pākehā and Māori worlds could intersect.

Te Tiriti itself can be seen as a Māori invitation. It promises a partnering of existing rangatiratanga with ‘kāwanatanga’, a new form of authority over settlers, made from a transliteration of the word ‘governor’ (kāwana). Kāwanatanga (governorship) was an entirely new concept, its meaning modelled for Māori in the benevolent and respectful relationships northern Māori had had with Australian kāwana like Philip Gidley King. An acceptance of kāwanatanga in this land was an invitation to political engagement here, all held together in Te Tiriti with the promise (in Ture 3) that the interests of all parties would be protected.

This partnering invited productive forms of mutual assimilation, and the possibility of shared practices, structures and institutions (like schools, and universities).

Refusals

Had any of these invitations been taken up for universal benefit, had the relationship established by Te Tiriti proceeded on equitable terms, then institutions like the university would naturally be places that Māori had co-established here in Aotearoa, where Māori people and knowledges and social practices belonged and thrived.

Invitations to engagement by Māori continue to be made, yet more often than not have been (or are) refused. Our state institutions, for instance, have consistently refused to reflect Māori advice or a Māori worldview, leading to the depressing statistics of which we are all too aware. This has begun to change recently. But some gains are under threat. Sometimes, as is our current situation following the new right-wing coalition government formed in the last week, invitations that have been incrementally accepted over the last 30-40 years (such as embracing te reo Māori) get re-refused. Well, at least in some quarters.

And despite relative Māori marginalisation, Māori continue to invite relations of mutual benefit and do so within an understanding of themselves as ‘partners/parties to Te Tiriti’, and as ‘tangata whenua’—therefore continuing to assume a prior and ongoing responsibility to, and authority in, this place as well as a responsibility to all who will come after. Māori always did, and still do, feel a strong responsibility for achieving stability and prosperity for Aotearoa.

And that is why one of the only refusals Māori have made is to refuse to see themselves, or allow ourselves to be regarded, as simply another minority or pressure group in a long list, making demands and rights claims on our institutions, including our universities. Yet universities have developed in a state that has refused Māori invitations for real engagement—that is, a colonial state. Universities generally assume they will do any inviting to relationship, and on their own time and terms.

Māori on the one hand seek an acceptance that any university is here ultimately by virtue of Te Tiriti as the founding legitimacy of our nation and its institutions. Māori see ourselves as foundational partners in the development and success of our institutions, and we encourage the university to see Māori not as: political hot potatoes; one day an asset, the next a liability; a problem; a reputational risk. The call to indigenisation then, is simply the latest iteration of that ongoing, positive, 200-year-old invitation, to relationship and to partnership, to mutually productive possibilities and good outcomes.

Alison

As educational philosophers, we are all looking for new ideas, or new words, to think with. Central to educational theory and philosophy is a desire for concepts that will articulate our present, and provide sharp new (or renewed) insights and therefore guidance for practice. I would go so far as to say that language (discursive) work is the work of the philosophy of education.

So when, in April 2021, in her new role as Ihonuku Pro Vice-Chancellor Māori, Te Kawehau spoke about ‘indigenising the university’ I was immediately curious. She said: ‘indigenising the university is about finding ways where Māori knowledge, ways of being, thinking and doing can thrive’. I was struck by her use of the term ‘indigenising’, which seemed to mobilise discourses somewhat different from those I had been used to as a Pākehā academic in this university with a long interest in Māori-Pākehā educational engagement.

I am not saying that ‘indigenising the university’ struck me because I had never heard it before, or that it is a new idea. Last time I looked there were about 40 mentions in Google Scholar of the phrase ‘indigenizing the university’, almost all post the year 2000, largely in the Canadian context, but also in the Pacific, Asia, Africa, North America. I think the reason I was alert was that I had not heard the phrase ‘indigenising the university’ uttered by someone in an official university leadership position, in a public forum (See our article, Hoskins & Jones, 2022).

We had become familiar with the language of kaupapa Māori theory and methodology that developed as concepts in the academy by our friends and colleagues Graham Smith and Linda Smith and others in this university in the 1990s and early 2000s. ‘Kaupapa Māori theory’ has so successfully entered research and theory contexts, particularly in Aotearoa New Zealand, that it has almost become a normalised phrase sometimes to the extent of being empty of more than superficial meaning. (And we have heard Graham Smith talk about the dangers of such normalisation as ‘domestication’.)

But outside of those who thrived in the conceptual space opened up in the university by kaupapa Māori theory—mostly Māori students and academics—other discourses remained most powerful in broader rhetoric related to Māori and the university. ‘The university’ was for many decades concerned with what was called ‘Māori educational achievement’ in terms of student success and retention, and staff representation, led by the language of the hallowed trinity: diversity, equity, and inclusion (known overseas as DEI). The conversation was dominated by statistics; my short-lived role as Pro Vice-Chancellor Equity in the early 2000s was driven by reporting statistics and worrying over the flat lines of the resulting graphs.

Diversity, equity and inclusion discourses

It was generally agreed that inclusion was key. A range of practices developed to include Māori individuals into ‘our’ great institution.

• Māori language signage and the use of te reo in greetings increased. (We pretty much all automatically have ‘ngā mihi’ in our email signature line these days, without thinking about what it might commit us to, or what it means).

• A Pro Vice-Chancellor Māori role appeared. Affirmative action programmes developed, like MAPAS in the medical school, and the popular Tuākana a programme that involves more experienced Māori students mentoring newer ones.

• Many lecturers began to use indigenous examples and Māori words in our teaching

• We began to offer staff professional development in topics like Te Tiriti and te reo, especially for non-Māori staff and for recent arrivals in the country.

These are all excellent developments. But one of the things I have noticed is that many inclusion discourses and their practices, although intended to benefit Māori, tend to appeal more to non-Māori and to benefit them.

I notice that non-Māori staff are hungry for programmes that can help us understand ‘the Māori world’ better, so that we can stop feeling anxious about ‘offending’ someone, or embarrassing ourselves, and so can feel better about ourselves in Māori settings. Or so that we can get better data from accessing Māori research subjects and communities, or complete those annoying parts of ethics forms and funding applications that require some attention to Māori consultation.

I recognise these Pākehā desires and anxieties related to inclusion and diversity. I recognise the desire that compels a Pākehā academic to go, carefully and with good intention, to a Māori colleague to ask for them to ‘do a karakia’ or a mihi whakatau, or assist with a pōhiri, or provide an appropriate translation. These in themselves are not bad things … although this desire can sometimes be ridiculous and damaging: Just the other day I heard about a situation where the one Māori person in the room was asked out of the blue to ‘say a karakia’. He had to get out his cell phone and google something. And we still hear of successful research fund applications with non-Māori leaders on a Māori-relevant topic who apparently consulted Māori but did not.

Despite my impatient tone here, we are not against inclusion practices. In our recent article (Hoskins & Jones, 2022), Te Kawehau and I reflect on how narratives and practices of indigenous inclusion have been—and still are—important as we keep our university relevant and socially responsible.

However, we also recognise how inclusion discourses are problematic or have problematic effects (and not just in terms of having to get out your cell phone to google a karakia!). Although it may have been somewhat transformative for many Pākehā, it is not clear that our inclusion thinking in the university has been particularly transformative for Māori—and, I might add, Pacific communities—despite us being New Zealand’s so-called ‘leading university’.

This lack of significant impact (a favourite word in the academy these days!) may be based in the positioning effects of inclusive discourses. The academy is positioned as something ‘outside’ of te ao Māori so that indigenous individuals have to be included in its (our) already existing structures and practices. Inclusion and diversity suggest that Māori (and other Others) need to be included with ‘us’ who are the university, the already-privileged so that privilege can be shared with ‘you’.

We welcome you. We welcome you to be included in what we are. Tēnā koutou! Māori are the ‘koutou’, you.

To refer to what Te Kawehau has just said, our idea of inclusion seems to be also our idea of invitation. We invite you to come and be part of us. The thing is, our inclusion invitation is specifically one way. Te Kawehau is talking about a Māori invitation, which seems to be a different animal from ours. If I am right, the invitation she refers to is one for mutual benefit, not one that is generously for your benefit. We will return to the problem of such apparent generosity.

Decolonisation as a discourse

I need to say something about decolonisation. Some say that indigenisation is or should be an exclusively indigenous project; that indigenising should be carried out by Māori, for Māori, and that the work of non-indigenous New Zealanders/Pākehā/tāngata tiriti/tauiwi, is decolonisation. In general and typically vague terms, so-called decolonising work involves something like: ‘alert critical attention to the ongoing colonial structures and thinking inside the academy and in wider social contexts that continue to disadvantage, ignore, exclude the interests and knowledges of indigenous peoples’ (that is my summary definition).

My concern with decolonising discourses, whether taken up by Māori or Pākehā, is that, on their own, they have a tendency to get stuck in an eddy of critique: an endless repetition of what is wrong, how the colonisers are yet again at fault, who and what is to blame and shame. Emotions can rule in this corner when rule by knowledge is far more useful.

Another problem evident with some of the tendencies in decolonising critique is its mobilisation of some of the less helpful aspects of critical theory. Decolonising rhetoric often mobilises simplified binary concepts including binary identities such as: Māori—Pākehā; you (or us) the oppressed—us (or you) the oppressors; the university—us (or you); the powerful—the powerless.

[I also notice rigid and simplified binary notions of identity that discourage more complex thinking—for instance, confusion about hapū fighting on the side of the British during the New Zealand land wars.]

Such binaries encourage very simple notions of how power works, when (to paraphrase Foucault) power is most often a fluid shifting force acting on and through all of us, rather than a force that simply acts down from the powerful to the powerless.

I need to make clear: I am not talking about whether or not practices in the name of ‘decolonisation’ are good, bad or indifferent. I am making a wider theoretical point: if we are primarily guided by the idea of decolonisation, we ‘the colonisers’ (as well as Māori, as ‘the colonised’, for whom this critique can be attractive) can more easily tend towards simplified conceptualisations and frameworks for thinking.

Similarly, when we are primarily guided by the idea of inclusion we more easily tend towards a positioning binary where you must be included with us—a notion that Te Kawehau’s ‘indigenisation as a Māori invitation’ shifts on its axis.

Being of this place

If we take the idea of ‘indigenous’ in at least one simple sense of that word, we are talking about ‘being of this place’. The university has powerful and respected origins in Europe and other places, but this is not to say that we cannot and should not enable (or demand) our university to be for us and by us in this place. As Te Kawehau suggested, the university does not necessarily need to be a colonial institution, imported from elsewhere for supposed collective benefit. ‘Indigenising the university’ in these terms refers to our university being more consciously located here, of this place Aotearoa (and of Tāmaki Makaurau, and of Te Taitokerau where we also have a campus).

There are those in the New Zealand academy who are frightened by this idea. They write articles titled ‘Universities should be apolitical, not centres of social justice activism’; ‘New Zealand’s descent into ethno-nationalism’; and ‘Indigenisation threatens the university’s very foundations’. These writers and their friends seem to assume that indigenisation is a zero-sum game—that if (as Te Kawehau put it) ‘Māori knowledge, ways of being, thinking and doing can thrive’ then science or scientific logic will somehow wither away. We would hope, for all our sakes, that science is far too important and too strong to be simply knocked down by a flowering of indigenous thought, language and practices in the university. Cutting-edge science must thrive in our universities; indigenous knowledges and practices must also thrive (and can thrive) in a positive mutually-interested relationship with science.

Finally, I have long been fascinated by this question in the Grammar and Vocabulary of the Language of New Zealand printed in 1820—almost exactly 200 years ago, five years following the arrival of the first Pākehā settlement, and speaking of these Pākehā: Ka maodi tia te Pakeha?

An English translation is given: are the Pakeha naturalised? Now, ‘ka māoritia te Pākehā’ (written with more modern spelling) can be understood as ‘will the Pākehā become māori?’ or ‘are the Pākehā māori?’ or maybe ‘can the Pākehā become māori?’

Māori means ‘normal, ordinary’, not special. The question is ‘Have the Pākehā/can they/become part of us, here? Are the Pākehā now ‘of this place’? Or (I infer) do the Pākehā remain ‘foreign’, somehow ‘outside’ this place?

To return to Te Kawehau’s mention of Māori invitation, now 200 years later: a Māori question seems to be: have the Pākehā accepted our invitation to be here like we are?

Te Kawehau

So, to return to the second part of our title: why attempt to engage in indigenising the university? So we can be here, of this university, and to properly serve this place, our people and all the people that come here.

‘Indigenisation’ is an invitation to see indigeneity as benefiting the institution—culturally, socially and epistemologically. It is to see we have a deep and abiding investment and care in the future of the university being successful in all the ways it needs to be. We are ‘behind’ the university. Yes, Māori critiques of the university are rightfully present, but where Māori are genuinely valued—commitment and a unity of purpose follow.

Calls for indigenisation aren’t calls for backward-looking, internalised, parochial ways of being a university. Māori were and remain always outward looking. So, calls for indigenisation, in the Māori view, don’t represent a threat to rankings, to reputation, to standards of excellence—even as re-alignment will be sought. They are not calls to burn science down, to reject disciplines, to politicise everything, to reject academic freedom or freedom of speech.

Calls for indigenisation are calls for workable, contextual transformations where they are needed and where they will make a difference. They are calls to stay engaged with a journey and a direction of travel, to complexity, to taking time—not to go for programmatic, one-size-fits-all solutions. Some of these calls are strategic and structural, and many are epistemic, but they are first, and always, calls to committed relationality.

And we are experts at relationships. One of our powers is our ease with plurality and relational forms of autonomy, practices for diplomacy and sharing social space, and for reaching forms of consensus in the interests of co-existence, for supporting positive forms of identity and bridging polarising positions. We have shown how to create the ground for engagement and debate that can support difficult conversations and can move people on from intractable, oppositional and damaging positions. And this is something universities in particular need to be leaders in.

It is only really relationships that can help us with the moments of incommensurability, with exchanges between divergent worlds requiring careful and constant negotiation. We can be alarmed by differences, or we can see such exchanges as fertile ground for intellectual growth and for shaping how things could be better in our places.

Finally, the objective of indigenisation is a genuine ‘tātou’, a collective ‘us’. Not a ‘you Māori’ (koutou) as Alison mentioned. You Māori, who we/mātou/the institution, are helping, parenting, including. Tātou is a unique form of us, it points to forms of shared identity (not sameness) for Māori and all members of the institution. It is achieved when we all recognise the institution as ours because relations are being actively rebalanced; our ways of being are held and nurtured, alongside all others.

Tātou represents an understanding that we are always-already relations with responsibilities to each other. Tātou supports a focus on our relational exchanges with others and our places. And it is in these everyday exchanges at all levels of our worlds, in the context of our universities, that there are possibilities for the maximisation of life.

Glossary

hapū – kin groups, subtribes

iwi – tribes

karakia – invocation

kaupapa Māori – Māori philosophy, perspective

kāwanatanga – governorship (from transliteration of governor, kāwana)

kīngitanga – the power like that of a sovereign (from the English word king)

koutou – you (plural)

mātou – we, us (not including you to whom we speak)

mihi whakatau – welcome ceremony

ngā mihi – thanks, greetings

Pākehā – (white) European settlers

pōhiri – formal welcome ceremony

rangatira – leaders

Tāmaki Makaurau – central Auckland area

tāngata tiriti – literally ‘people of the treaty’ (identity phrase used by some non-Māori people)

tangata whenua – indigenous people

tātou – us all (including the speaker)

tauiwi – people from elsewhere (identity term used by some non-Māori people)

te ao Māori – the Māori world

te reo – the Māori language

Te Taitokerau – northern area of New Zealand

Te Tiriti – short for Te Tiriti o Waitangi, the treaty signed by many rangatira in 1840

tēnā koutou – greetings to you all

ture – an article of agreement in Te Tiriti 

whānau – smaller kin groups

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Te Kawehau Hoskins

Te Kawehau Hoskins (Ngāti Hau, Ngāpuhi) is an associate professor in Te Puna Wānanga, School of Māori and Indigenous Education. She is currently Ihonuku Pro Vice Chancellor Māori at Waipapa Taumata Rau University of Auckland. She works and writes in indigenising the academy.

Alison Jones

Alison Jones is a professor in Te Puna Wānanga, School of Māori and Indigenous Education, at Waipapa Taumata Rau University of Auckland. She is a Pākehā writing and working in the field of Māori-Pākehā relations.